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VISION-LIST Digest Volume 13 Issue 33
VISION-LIST Digest Tue Jul 26 16:15:51 PDT 94 Volume 13 : Issue 33
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Today's Topics:
Matching translated tesselation
Tesselation of the sphere
CMU Artificial Intelligence Repository
CBCL at MIT on the WWW
Updates on 12-ICPR, Jerusalem
94 SMC Conference
New book: Geometry-Driven Diffusion in Computer Vision (long)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 1994 09:06:28 GMT
From: s9151893@mella.ee.up.ac.za
Organization: Faculty of Engineering, University of Pretoria
Subject: Matching translated tesselation
Hi,
Can anyone give me some tips/ideas on how to solve the following problem
I have 2 grids (256x256). Each grid has 40 locations scattered all over it.
The 2 "patterns" of locations on each grid is precisely the same except that
the one grid has an offset in both the x and y directions. The offsets are
unknown. Some of the locations in each "pattern" may be missing, but not
more than say 30% of the 40 locations.
I need an algorithm to determine the x and y offsets. I have one solution,
but it takes much too long on my 386DX40. It is basically an optimizing
algorithm that determines the position where the one pattern multiplied with
the other pattern gives a maximum value.
Any other ideas will be more than welcome (and appreciated).
Thanks
Herman le Roux
email : s9151893@mella.ee.up.ac.za
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Jul 94 15:19:35 EDT
From: Ales Ude <ude@ira.uka.de>
Subject: Tesselation of the sphere
Hello,
Can anybody provide me any information regarding where I can get a
code for a uniform tesselation of the Gaussian sphere? The code
should provide the follwing functionality:
1) The calculation of uniformly distributed viewing directions on the
sphere (like for instance the one based on a subdivision of the
icosahedron as described in "Computer Vision" by Ballard and Brown).
2) Given a particular viewing direction, which class of the viewing
directions does it belong to?
Thanks in advance.
Ales Ude
Email: ude@ira.uka.de
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 1994 20:09:10 GMT
From: ai+@cs.cmu.edu (AI Repository)
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Subject: CMU Artificial Intelligence Repository
Summary: Comprehensive anonymous FTP site for AI, plus AI CD-ROMs
** ANNOUNCING **
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ CMU Artificial Intelligence Repository +
+ and +
+ Prime Time Freeware for AI +
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
July 1994
The CMU Artificial Intelligence Repository was established by Carnegie
Mellon University to contain public domain and freely distributable
software, publications, and other materials of interest to AI researchers,
educators, students, and practitioners. The AI Repository currently
contains more than a gigabyte of material and is growing steadily.
The AI Repository is accessible for free by anonymous FTP, AFS, and WWW.
A selection of materials from the AI Repository is also being published
on CD-ROM by Prime Time Freeware and should be available for purchase
at AAAI-94 or direct by mail or fax from Prime Time Freeware (see below).
ACCESSING THE AI REPOSITORY:
To access the AI Repository by anonymous FTP, ftp to:
ftp.cs.cmu.edu [128.2.206.173]
and cd to the directory:
/user/ai/
Use username "anonymous" (without the quotes) and type your email
address (in the form "user@host") as the password.
To access the AI Repository by AFS (Andrew File System), use the directory:
/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/ai-repository/ai/
To access the AI Repository by WWW, use the URL:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/Web/Groups/AI/html/repository.html
Be sure to read the files 0.doc and readme.txt in this directory.
CONTENTS OF THE AI REPOSITORY:
The AI Repository has the following main directories:
lang/ AI Programming Languages
areas/ AI Software Packages
util/ Compression and Archiving Utilities
events/ Calendar of Events, Conference Calls
pubs/ Publications, including technical reports, books,
mail/news archives
The AI Programming Languages and the AI Software Packages sections of
the repository are "complete". The other directories are in varying
states of completion.
The AI Programming Languages section contains hundreds of
implementations and support routines for AI programming languages,
including Common Lisp, Prolog, Scheme, and Smalltalk. It also includes
a variety of useful utilities, such as graphical user interfaces
(GUI), object-oriented programming extensions, and other software
development tools.
The AI Software Packages section includes subdirectories for:
agents/ Intelligent Agent Architectures
alife/ Artificial Life and Complex Adaptive Systems
anneal/ Simulated Annealing
blackbrd/ Blackboard Architectures
bookcode/ Code From AI Textbooks
ca/ Cellular Automata
classics/ Classical AI Programs
constrnt/ Constraint Processing
dai/ Distributed AI
discover/ Discovery and Data-Mining
doc/ Documentation
edu/ Educational Tools
expert/ Expert Systems/Production Systems
faq/ Frequently Asked Questions
fuzzy/ Fuzzy Logic
games/ Game Playing
genetic/ Genetic Algorithms, Genetic Programming,
Evolutionary Programming
icot/ ICOT Free Software
kr/ Knowledge Representation, Semantic Nets, Frames, ...
learning/ Machine Learning
misc/ Miscellaneous AI
music/ Music
neural/ Neural Networks, Connectionist Systems, Neural Systems
nlp/ Natural Language Processing (Natural Language
Understanding, Natural Language Generation, Parsing,
Morphology, Machine Translation)
planning/ Planning, Plan Recognition
reasonng/ Reasoning (Analogical Reasoning, Case Based Reasoning,
Defeasible Reasoning, Legal Reasoning, Medical Reasoning,
Probabilistic Reasoning, Qualitative Reasoning, Temporal
Reasoning, Theorem Proving/Automated Reasoning, Truth
Maintenance)
robotics/ Robotics
search/ Search
speech/ Speech Recognition and Synthesis
testbeds/ Planning/Agent Testbeds
************************************
vision/ Computer Vision
************************************
The repository has standardized on using 'tar' for producing archives
of files and 'gzip' for compression.
KEYWORD SEARCHING OF THE AI REPOSITORY:
To search the keyword index by mail, send a message to:
ai+query@cs.cmu.edu
with one or more lines containing calls to the KEYS command, such as:
keys lisp iteration
in the message body. Keywords may be regular expressions and are
compared with the index in a case-insensitive fashion. All of the
keywords must match a package for it to be included in the response,
which you'll receive by return mail. Do not include anything else in
the Subject line of the message or in the message body. For help on
the query mail server, include:
help
instead.
A Mosaic interface to the keyword searching program is in the works. We
also plan to make the source code (including indexes) to this program
available, as soon as it is stable.
CONTRIBUTING MATERIALS TO THE AI REPOSITORY:
Contributions of software and other materials are always welcome, but
must be accompanied by an unambiguous copyright statement that grants
permission for free use, copying, and distribution, such as:
- a declaration that the materials are in the public domain, or
- a copyright notice that states that the materials are subject to
the GNU General Public License (cite version), or
- some other copyright notice (we will tell you if the copying
permissions are too restrictive for us to include the materials
in the repository)
Inclusion of materials in the repository does not modify their copyright
status in any way.
As a general rule, we will only consider materials which include full
source code, unless there is a very compelling reason for binary-only
distribution.
Materials may be placed in:
ftp.cs.cmu.edu:/user/ai/new/
When you put anything in this directory, please send mail to
ai+contrib@cs.cmu.edu giving us permission to distribute the files, and
state whether this permission is just for the AI Repository, or also
includes publication on the CD-ROM version (Prime Time Freeware for AI).
We would appreciate if you would include a 0.doc file for your package;
see /user/ai/new/package.doc for a template. (If you don't have the
time to write your own, we can write it for you based on the
information in your package.)
PRIME TIME FREEWARE FOR AI (CD-ROM):
A portion of the contents of the repository is published annually by
Prime Time Freeware. The first issue consists of two ISO-9660 CD-ROMs
bound into a 224-page book. Each CD-ROM contains approximately 600
megabytes of gzipped archives (more than 2 gigabytes uncompressed and
unpacked). Prime Time Freeware for AI is particularly useful for folks
who do not have FTP access, but may also be useful as a way of saving
disk space and avoiding annoying FTP searches and retrievals.
Prime Time Freeware helped establish the CMU AI Repository, and sales
of Prime Time Freeware for AI will continue to help support the
maintenance and expansion of the repository. It sells (list) for US$60
plus applicable sales tax and shipping and handling charges. Payable
through Visa, MasterCard, postal money orders in US funds, and checks
in US funds drawn on a US bank. For further information on Prime Time
Freeware for AI and other Prime Time Freeware products, please contact:
Prime Time Freeware
370 Altair Way, Suite 150
Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA
Tel: +1 408-433-9662
Fax: +1 408-433-0727
E-mail: ptf@cfcl.com
AI REPOSITORY ARCHIVIST:
The AI Repository was established by Mark Kantrowitz in 1993 as an
outgrowth of the Lisp Utilities Repository (established 1990) and his
work on the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) postings for the AI, Lisp,
Scheme, and Prolog newsgroups. The Lisp Utilities Repository has been
merged into the AI Repository.
Bug reports, comments, questions and suggestions concerning a
particular software package should be sent to the address indicated by
the author.
Bug reports, comments, questions and suggestions concerning the repository
should be sent to
Mark Kantrowitz
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3891
Fax: +1 412-681-5739
E-mail: AI.Repository@cs.cmu.edu
------------------------------
Date: 22 Jul 1994 22:24:48 GMT
From: marney@motor-cortex.ai.mit.edu (Marney Smyth)
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab
Subject: CBCL at MIT on the WWW
A special announcement to those of you who are not already aware of
a new entry to the World Wide Web. The MIT Center for Biological and
Computational Learning (CBCL) is now on the net. I am delighted to direct you
towards the Unique Resource Locator (URL):
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/cbcl/web-homepage/web-homepage.html
Here you can browse through information relating to our work, to the
Center itself, and the people associated with us. The homepage is
growing all the time, and new links are constantly being added - the
newest addition is a pictorial representation of Pawan Sinha's object
recognition work, based on his recent presentation at ARVO 94.
Special thanks for their work on building this entry go to Federico
Girosi (CBCL) and Robert Thau (MIT AI Lab). If you have any comments,
observations and/or suggestions to make, please send your comments
forward to marney@ai.mit.edu.
Marney Smyth
CBCL at MIT
------------------------------
(5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for <vision-list@teleos.com>); Tue, 26 Jul 1994 05:34:47 -0700
(5.65c/HUJI 4.153 for image-group); Tue, 26 Jul 1994 14:04:09 +0300
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 1994 14:04:09 +0300
From: Shmuel Peleg <peleg@cs.huji.ac.il>
Subject: Updates on 12-ICPR, Jerusalem
Status: R
===============================================================================
***** Updates *****
12th ICPR : INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PATTERN RECOGNITION
9-13 October 1994
Renaissance Hotel, Jerusalem, Israel
***** Advance Registration Deadline: 9 August 1994 *****
***** Authors: Camera ready due August 8 at the IEEE Computer Society *****
===============================================================================
1. Get full updated information by sending E-Mail to icpr-info@cs.huji.ac.il.
2. A network of 15 Silicon Graphics computers and 10 NCD X-terminals, with
a high-speed Internet link, will be available. Bring your Demonstrations!!
You could also telnet to your own computer, of course, and read E-Mail.
3. On-Line information about Jerusalem can be obtained by telnet into
"www.huji.ac.il", login as www, and then select "[1] Line Mode Interface"
followed by "[3] Databases in Israel" and "[13] The Jerusalem Mosaic".
Dont worry if you get some funny symbols. If you have Mosaic you can select:
http://shum.cc.huji.ac.il/jeru/jerusalem.html
4. The Banquet will be a Bedouine feast, combined with a special
sight-and-sound show, at the foot of Massada. An unfogettable experience!
During the banquet, the following announcements will be made:
* IAPR Announcement: New IAPR Executive Committee, Venue for 14-ICPR
* Nomination of IAPR Fellows
* Best Industry-Related Paper Award
* Best-Paper-Award by the journal "Pattern Recognition"
5. The opening session of the conference will be on Monday, 10 Aug, 08:30 AM:
8:30 Welcome Address: J. Aggarwal, President of IAPR
8:40 Presentation of the K.S. Fu Award
8:45 Address by the winner of the K.S. Fu Award
9:15 Welcome Address: 12-ICPR Conference Chairmen
9:30 Plenary Talk: Avnir, D. - Hebrew University - THE PATTERNED NATURE
10:00 Coffee Break
10:30 Start of 4 Parallel Sessions
6. Master Card is now also accepted for registration payments.
===============================================================================
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 94 11:25:35 CDT
From: sseida@trident.datasys.swri.edu (Steven Seida)
Subject: 94 SMC Conference
1994 IEEE International Conference
on
Systems, Man and Cybernetics
October 2-5, 1994
Gonzalez Convention Center and
San Antonio Marriot Riverwalk Hotel
San Antonio, Texas
Over 500 Papers!
INVITED SESSIONS SUMMARY
INVITED SESSION TITLE SESSION CHAIR
Inductive Algorithms for Complex Systems Modelling I & II
Donald E. Brown
Petri Nets and Manufacturing Antonio Camurri and Riccardo Miniciardi
Advances in Human-Computer Interaction Arye Ephrath
Application of Petri Nets for the Design and Analysis of FMS
J.C. Gentina
Supervisory Control of Discrete Event Systems
Allesandro Giua and Luca Ferrarini
Agile Manufacturing James Graham
Associate Systems I & II John K. Hammer
Petri Nets: Theory and Manufacturing Applications Mu Der Jeng
Human Interaction in Complex Systems:
I - User Support Issues in Complex and Distributed Systems
Christine M. Mitchell
II - Evaluating and Understanding Human Interaction with Complex
Systems
Patricia M. Jones
III - Models for Analysis and Design of Human Interaction with Complex
Systems
G.A. Sundstrom
IV - Designing Human Interactions with Complex Systems D. Serfaty
V - Human Interaction in Complex Systems Patricia M. Jones
Neural Adaptive Control of Nonlinear Systems I (Part A&B)
Dominique Lamy and Manolis A. Christodoulou
Fuzzy Adaptive Control Dominique Lamy and Pierre Borne
Real-Time Imaging I & II P. LaPlante
Requirements Engineering Methods TBD
Environmental Decision Making I D.B. Meister
Environmental Decision Making II Keith W. Hipel
Progress in Visual System Cybernetics R.B. Pinter
Manufacturing Systems and Petri Nets Jean-Marie Proth
Approximating the Senses Carol Luckhardt Redfield
Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems Brian Smith
Heuristic Search Tony Cox
Computational Models for Texture, Depth and Perception TBD
Man-Machine Interaction in Power Systems Zita A. Vale
Batch Processes Robert Valette
Fuzzy and Neural Network Controls: Theory and Applications
Fei-Yeu Wang and H.M. Kim
Systems Simulation K. Preston White
Expert Systems, Knowledge-Based Systems, Database Systems or Fuzzy
Systems (actual title TBD)
Sahnoun Zaidi
Medical Systems TBD
Service Sector and Public Systems Dan Berg and James Tien
CONTRIBUTED SESSIONS (Preliminary) SUMMARY
Human-Computer Interaction
Robotics
Petri Nets and Discrete Event Systems
Manufacturing
Fuzzy Sets
Expert and Knowledge Based Systems
Neural Nets
Control
Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems
Image Processing and Pattern Recognition
Optimization
Genetic Algorithms
Simulated Annealing
Systems Theory and Applications
Learning
Information and Decision Systems
Planning
Medical Systems and Information
Computer Hardware and Software
GENERAL INFORMATION
San Antonio occupies an area in south central Texas at the edge of the Gulf
Coastal Plains, about 140 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico and 80 miles
south of Austin. San Antonio offers for the visitor's enjoyment the
meandering Paseo del Rio (River Walk); the Alamo; La Villita (little old
San Antonio); the San Antonio Zoo; El Mercado (the Market Place); Sea
World of Texas, and the newest theme park, Fiesta Texas, home of the
world's largest wooden roller coaster (built next to a quarry cliff).
Preservation of the city's historical charm and grace are evidenced by the
five Spanish missions, including the Alamo, and the historic neighborhood,
the King William District. Museums that capture San Antonio's history
include the McNay Art Institute, the Institute of Texan Cultures, the Witte
Museum and the San Antonio Museum of Art.
Advance Registration Form
IEEE/SMC Non- Student
(Please circle relavant amount) Member Member or Retiree
-------- -------- ----------
Advance Registration Fee (before Aug. 26) $270 $325 $30
On-Site Registration Fee $295 $360 $30
Registrations received after August 26, 1994 will be billed at on-site rates.
Registration fee (except student and retiree) includes Welcoming Reception,
Awards Luncheon on Monday, Banquet on Tuesday, and one set of Conference
Proceedings.
(a) Conference Registration Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $__________
(b) Additional Copies of Proceedings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $__________
(Members @ $50 ea., Non-Members @ $70 ea.)
(c) Extra Banquet Tickets #___ @ $35 each . . . . . . . . . . . . $__________
Workshop Registration (Sunday, Oct. 2)
(1) Direct Multivariable Model Reference Adaptive Control: Theory and
Applications
(2) Neuro-Vision: Neuro-morphology of biological and machine-vision systems
(3) Stochastic Methods in Optimization and Search
Before After Not Student or
(* Includes textbook) Aug 26 Aug 26 Attending Retiree
---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
Workshop #1 $200* $230 $200 $70*
Workshop #2 $150* $180 $230 $70*
Workshop #3 $150* $180 $230 $70*
(d) Workshop total. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $__________
TOTAL AMOUNT DUE: (add lines a through d) . . . . . . . . . . . . $__________
Name (Last, First, MI) ______________________________________________________
Name on Badge _______________________________________________________________
Affiliation ___________________________Department ___________________________
Street Address ______________________________________________________________
City _________________________ State ______ Zip ________ Country ____________
Fax ________________________________ e-mail _________________________________
Accompanying Guest's Name ___________________________________________________
Society Membership (check one): __IEEE __SMC Affiliate __Other:____________
Membership # ________________________________________________________________
Please make check or money order in US currency payable to 1994 IEEE SMC and
mail this form to the Registration chair (FAX OR E-MAIL REGISTRATION WILL
NOT BE ACCEPTED):
Dr. Ernest Franke / Margaret Booker
Southwest Research Institute
P.O. Drawer 28510
San Antonio, TX 78228-0510
phone: (210) 522-3865 e-mail: efranke@swri.edu
Alternatively, you can charge the total amount to:
__Mastercard __Visa __American Express
Card No._________________ Exp. Date________ Signature________________________
------------------------------
Date: 22 Jul 1994 09:17:12 +0200
From: bart@cv.ruu.nl (Bart M. ter Haar Romeny)
Subject: New book: Geometry-Driven Diffusion in Computer Vision (long)
Organization: University of Utrecht, 3D Computer Vision Research Group
Recently there was an inquiry to the source of anisotropic diffusion.
This field, where the process of evolution (blurring) of the image
is a function of the image information itself, is rather new.
A number of approaches to this process are currently developed.
In September 1994 the book "Geometry-Driven Diffusion in Computer Vision"
will appear, which is the first tutorial book in this field.
The contributions are from the leading researchers in this area,
in a transatlantic collaboration funded jointly by the NSF and Esprit.
The book will be published by Kluwer. Information about availability
can be acquired from Kluwer (Paul Roos, PhD, email: roos@wkap.nl).
For your information I include the table of contents, the synopsis and
an exerpt from the preface by Jan Koenderink:
"GEOMETRY-DRIVEN DIFFUSION IN COMPUTER VISION"
Editor: Bart M. ter Haar Romeny - Utrecht University, the Netherlands
Contents:
*Foreword by Jan Koenderink - Utrecht University
*Introduction
*1. Linear Scale-Space I: Basic Theory
Tony Lindeberg - Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
Bart M. ter Haar Romeny - Utrecht University
*2. Linear Scale-Space II: Early Vision Operations
Tony Lindeberg - Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
Bart M. ter Haar Romeny - Utrecht University
*3. Anisotropic Diffusion
Pietro Perona - California Institute of Technology
Taka Shiota - Kyoto University
Jitendra Malik - University of California at Berkeley
*4. Vector-Valued Diffusion
Ross Whitaker - University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Guido Gerig - Technical University ETH Zurich
*5. Bayesian Rationale for the Variational Formulation
David Mumford - Harvard University
*6. Variational Problems with a Free Discontinuity Set
Antonio Leaci and Sergio Solimini, Lecce University
*7. Minimization of Energy Functional with Curve-Represented Edges
Niklas Nordstrom - Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
*9. Approximation, Computation and Distortion in the Variational
Formulation
Thomas J. Richardson - AT&T Bell Laboratories
Sanjoy K. Mitter - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
*9. Coupled Geometry-Driven Diffusion Equations for Low-Level Vision.
Marc Proesmans, Eric Pauwels, Luc van Gool - Leuven University
*10. Morphological Approach to Multiscale Analysis: From Principles to
Equations
Luis Alvarez - Las Palmas University
Jean Michel Morel - Paris University IX Dauphine
*11. Differential Invariant Signatures and Flows in Computer Vision: A
Symmetry Group Approach
Peter J. Olver - University of Minnesota
Guillermo Sapiro - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Allen Tannenbaum - University of Minnesota
*12. On Optimal Control Methods in Computer Vision and Image Processing
Benjamin Kimia - Brown University
Allen Tannanbaum - University of Minnesota
Steven Zucker - McGill University
*13. Non-Linear Scale-Space
Luc M. J. Florack, Alfons H. Salden, Bart M. ter Haar Romeny,
Jan J. Koenderink, Max A. Viergever - Utrecht University
*14. A Differential Geometric Approach to Anisotropic Diffusion
David Eberly - University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
*13. Numerical Analysis of Geometry-Driven Diffusion Equations
Wiro J. Niessen - Utrecht University
Bart M. ter Haar Romeny - Utrecht University
Max Viergever - Utrecht University
*full bibliography (370 references)
*full index (> 750 entries)
==================================================================
FOREWORD
The notion of scale, now widely recognized in computer vision, is
fundamentally related to the physics of observation and the process of
differentiation of discrete data. The stack of images at different
resolutions is known as a scale-space and is traditionally generated by
the linear diffusion equation. Linearity expresses the bottom-up nature
of linear scale-space: a multiresolution representation ignorant of what
is actually in the image. It is a universal ``front-end vision''
representation, without any a priori preferred scales.
Non-linear scale-space constitutes a natural extension of linear
scale-space for situations where additional a priori information is
available, and this knowledge is to be used in the front-end.
Segmentation, a very important ``medium-level'' task, i.e. defining a
hierarchy of meaningful structures in the image, is notoriously
difficult for a linear scale-space, the reason being precisely its
image-unbiased nature. A nonlinear scale-space, being tuned to the
particular image data and incorporating the notion of what should be
meant by ``meaningful'', provides a natural vehicle to incorporate
additional knowledge about the scene and the task.
This seminal book is a primer on geometry-driven, non-linear diffusion
as a promising new paradigm for vision, with emphasis on being tutorial.
The state-of-the-art robust mathematics opens a new direction in
computer vision, reflected in the rapid expansion of this field. All
authors of the carefully tuned chapters are known experts in the field.
They were requested to use a clear presentation style, while in the
editing process many crossreferences could be added. A common
bibliography for the chapters makes up for a state-of-the-art and rather
complete overview of current work. An extensive index, covering the
book as a whole, makes this book more than a textbook, a reference guide
into geometry-driven diffusion and its approaches.
The book presents a mathematically broad treatment of nonlinear (and
linear) scale-spaces: non-linear diffusion equations, axiomatic
approaches from morphology and group theory, energy minimising
functionals, curve and shape evolution, invariant signatures from
symmetry groups, the covariant formalism on image induced non-linear
metric, both in the spatial as scale domain, and more. Emphasis is
placed on the relation between the different approaches. All chapters
can be read individually, but the order in this book is chosen
carefully. As mentioned by Jan Koenderink: it is too early for a course
text (which undoubtedly will come), but the time is ripe for a thorough
analysis of the impact of the image data on the processing machinery in
a scale-space setting. This book explains why.
The book is meant for computer vision scientists and students, with a
computer science, mathematics or physics background. Appendices explain
the terminology in more detail. Many illustrated applications are given
for medical imaging, vector valued (or coupled) diffusion, general image
enhancement (e.g. edge preserving noise suppression, deblurring) and
modeling of the human front-end visual system.
This timely book is the fruit of a European-American transatlantic
collaboration, funded by the EC and NSF over 1993-1996. The book brings
together, in a unique and complete sense, the important groups active in
this field, many of which have an outstanding record of achievements.
The group formed in 1992, with a collaborating effort in the application of
a (travel and subsistence) grant proposal for the EC/NSF program. Since
then a number of succesful meetings were held: May 21-23 1993 the
kickoff meeting was held in Berlin (attracting 25 members of the group's
laboratories). Here the concept of the book was born. The joint meeting
with the Newton Mathematical Institute November 29-December 3 1993 saw
double the audience. The meeting in Stockholm, April 29-30 1994,
satellite to ECCV94, saw the first presentation of this book as first
tangible result of the collaboration.
We are grateful that Jan Koenderink, a most outspoken pioneer and well
recognised scientist of scale-space, has written a preface for this book.
AN EXERPT FROM THIS PREFACE:
``Pure scale-space'' can be constructed from a few basic
assumptions that essentially express {\em total a priori
ignorance}. Thus no scale, place or orientation is potentially
special in any way. The resulting pristine structure has the
beauty and fascination of something inevitable, a {\em
discovery\/} rather than a mere {\em construction}. However, it
tends to leave practical people unsatisfied because in any {\em
real\/} application one knows many things that might
advantageously be exploited in the analysis. This might be any
form of prior knowledge, including rather abstract notions of
what structure to expect, so that the actual data can be used
to control the operations performed on themselves. It seems
natural to try to use the freedom left in pure scale-space to
attach such control handles and thereby turn the nymph into a
handmaiden. It is perhaps fair to say that no one today knows
how to proceed in an apparently {\em necessary\/} way here,
thus the theory sprouts into a multitude of complementary and
concurrent approaches.
I have read through the manuscript of this book in
fascination. Most of the approaches that have been explored to
tweak scale-space into practical tools are represented here.
Many of the contributions have a certain attraction of their
own and several appear to be promising in future applications.
It is easy to appreciate how both the purist and the
engineer find problems of great interest in this area. The book
is certainly unique in its scope and has appeared at a time
where this field is booming and newcomers can still potentially
leave their imprint on the core corpus of scale related methods
that will slowly emerge. As such the book is a very timely one.
It is quite evident that it would be out of the question to
compile anything like a textbook at this stage: This book is a
snapshot of the field that manages to capture its current state
very well and in a most lively fashion. I can heartily
recommend its reading to anyone interested in the issues of
image structure, scale and resolution.
One thing that the reader will notice is the nature of the
pictures that go to illustrate many of the contributions: They
are quite distinct in character from the type of illustration
one meets in the pure diffusion literature. The difference lies
in the very sharpness of the ``blurred'' images. Here we meet
with the same fascination one finds in {\em e.g.}, Canaletto's
\index{Canaletto}
figures in his paintings of Venice's squares: As the viewer
looks at the painted figures farther and farther away in the
perspective of the pavement details are lost though the figures
are always made up of sharply delimited blobs of paint. In the
near foreground a single blob may stand for the button of a
waistcoat, in the far distance a whole head, yet everything
appears mysteriously ``sharp'' at {\em any\/} distance. It is
as with cartographic generalization where the general shape of
a city may suddenly give way to a circular disc.
For those readers sensitive to such matters the
mathematics also has a quite different flavor from the original
diffusion literature. We meet with an {\em embarras de
richesse\/} perhaps typical of a field in rapid development. It
seems almost inevitable that many of the various strands will
eventually come together in the weave of something novel.
I complement the editor on this timely and fascinating
book and promise the reader pleasure and profit.
Jan~J.Koenderink, Utrecht University
END EXERPT
Bart M. ter Haar Romeny, Editor
Utrecht, the Netherlands
April 1994
Bart M. ter Haar Romeny Ph.D. E-mail: bart@cv.ruu.nl
3D Computer Vision - Room E.02.222 Tel: (+31)-30.506695/507772
University Hospital Utrecht Fax: (+31)-30.513399
Heidelberglaan 100, 3584 CX Utrecht, The Netherlands
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End of VISION-LIST digest 13.33
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